In the preparation of food products, depending on the type of food product being prepared, different operative conditions are employed in the various devices that are utilized in the preparation of the food product. These devices or machines can include injectors for introducing various marinades and other additives into the food products and macerators for tenderizing the food products, among others.
However, because these machines are often utilized to process and prepare different types of food products having different parameters, such as meat products including beef, pork, poultry, muscle groups, and other meat types, among others, the differences in these types of food products require different preparation steps in order to properly prepare the food product as desired. For example, the spacing for the rotary blade shafts in a macerator must be adjusted to accommodate the size of the various types of food products so that the particular food products are properly macerated/cut/surface treated for further processing.
In prior art food product processing systems, the control of the operation of the individual devices or machines utilized in the system is accomplished by manually adjusting the operational parameters of the individual machines to the desired condition. Thus, when there is a change in the type of food product being processed or in the desired final preparation for the food products, the individual machines must be manually reconfigured to the desired settings to produce the food products in the desired state.
However, to make these adjustments, the prior art devices require that an individual turn a handwheel or other manually operable instrument to adjust the settings for the device. Because this is required for each device in the food processing system, oftentimes an individual would fail to accurately make the adjustment on each of the devices in the system, or simply would place the devices at a compromise setting that could enable the devices to process multiple types of food products, but without the devices being optimized for any one product type.
In order to reduce the amount of adjustment required for the machines to accommodate these types of changes, various mechanisms have been developed for use on the various machines in a food processing system to reduce the manual adjustment necessary for these machines. For example, U.S. Publ. No. 2005/0124276 of Gagliardi, Jr. discloses a meat tenderizing and flattening apparatus. The apparatus includes a pair of parallel rollers spaced apart by a predetermined distance. The predetermined distance is preferably in the range of about 1/16th inch to about ¾th inch, a distance which may be adjusted as needed. This publication also recognizes that the spacing between the rollers may be adjusted based upon the size of the meat being tenderized and flattened, the desired final thickness of the meat, as well as other factors apparent to those of skill in the art
Further, U.S. Pat. No. 5,957,767 to Horton describes a meat tenderizing apparatus that includes an upper roller and a lower roller spaced from the upper roller. Meat to be tenderized is passed between the rollers, and the upper roller is adjustable to vary the spacing between the rollers to accommodate meats of various thicknesses. Horton also teaches a first dial to adjust the spacing between the upper and lower rollers and teaches a second dial that rotates the upper rollers. Horton teaches that the second dial may be driven by a motor.
Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 4,531,259 to Bridge, Jr. teaches a meat tenderizer that includes a pair of rotary knives, one of which is fixed and another of which is floating. This arrangement allows the floating knife to move upwardly and downwardly to vary the spacing between the knives to accommodate contours of the meat to be tenderized. The floating knife is spring biased downward but is allowed to float as the size, shape, and contour of the mass passing between the knives changes. Additionally, Bridge, Jr. teaches manually setting the floating knife at a fixed position if a fixed spacing between the fixed and floating knives is desired.
However, all of these prior art documents fail to teach or suggest automatically adjusting the spacing between the rollers based on one or more inputs made to a remote control panel or other interface, e.g., a “recipe” setting the parameters of the food processing process. Therefore, it is desirable to develop a control system for a food product processing system that enables the operating parameters of the system to be automatically and remotely adjusted to accommodate a change in the type or final condition of a food product being processed by the system.